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Attorney charged with lying in Russia special counsel probe

Prosecutors working for Mueller charged that the lawyer lied to FBI agents about his conversations with former Trump aide Rick Gates.
Credit: AFP Contributor
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, special counsel on the Russian investigation, leaves following a meeting with members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee at the US Capitol in this file photo from June 21, 2017.

Special counsel Robert Mueller revealed another criminal charge on Tuesday in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, this time against a lawyer who had worked with some of President Trump's former campaign aides.

Prosecutors working for Mueller charged that the lawyer, Alex Van Der Zwaan, lied to FBI agents about his conversations with former Trump aide Rick Gates, who was indicted last year on charges related to his work on behalf of pro-Russian factions in Ukraine.

Van Der Zwaan has plead guilty to the charge.

Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged along with Gates.

The charge, outlined in a two-page filing, alleges that Van Der Zwaan secretly recorded telephone conversations with Gates in September 2016.

Prosecutors accuse Van Der Zwaan, an associate in the London firm of Skaaden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, of lying to federal agents about his last contacts with Gates in August 2016 and failing to turn over email communications to federal investigators.

According to the court documents, federal investigators focused on Van Der Zwaan's 2012 work on a report related to the trial of former Ukranian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a political rival of then-Ukraine President Victor Yanukovych, whose government Manafort and Gates worked to promote.

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